You may think that the massive US defense spending is unnecessary for world peace (today, in your own tiny corner of the world), but I suspect that many South Koreans, Taiwanese, Japanese, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Poles, and others would disagree with you.

There is no need for an arms race. No other country is able to sustain a military invasion of the US, much less overwhelm the US on US soil with its technical superiority. The US does not need to constantly improve its technical ability, so sacrificing some of that potential ability is acceptable.

What would really help the Defense Department is to abandon some of our useless alliances. Withdrawal from South Korea, Japan, and Europe, as well as the planned withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, should provide more than enough money for developing new toys.

The F35 per unit costs are higher than those of the F22. And while it's being built as an export version of the poor-man's F22 it will wind up too expensive even for its own technology development partner nations. And this will drive the per unit cost to the stratosphere. When Gates curtails the F22 program, the F35 program will also wind up badly curtailed. This will leave us with an aging fleet rapidly reaching the end of its service live with no new models in the pipeline to replace them.

Similarly Saab's 39 mod G4.5 fighter still has NO customers. Sales for Typhoon and the Eurofighter are below projections.

The size of the US defense budget is completely unjustified. To debate what type of jets that should be procured is to make the false assumption that the US Military Industrial Complex is vital in maintaining peace in the world.
The stated aim of the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was to fight 'terror'. Yet terrorist attacks have dramatically increased since the beginning of the Iraq invasion- by some estimates they have increased 7-fold. To any rational person this increase in terrorism was predictible.
The real reason for the US's presence in Iraq and Afghanistan (and 100 other countries around the world) is mostly ecomomic- to protect American private business interests abroad and to maintain the weapons industry at home. How else do you explain the fact that since WW2 the USA has kept up a huge military complex. During the cold war they could justify their military activity by pointing to the Soviet threat. But since the breakup of the Soviet Union they found other 'threats' in the form of the 'War on terror', Iran, Russia ..etc, and as a result have not been forced to dismantle their military.
In western Europe and the USA, we can speak in a detached way about weapons, as if they are just another piece of technology, like an iPhone or a lawnmower; but this is because we have never been the object of them.

I absolutely agree with you if you expand the argument beyond the F-22/F-35 comparison. The bigger assumption to challenge is why must the US arm for a two major theater war scenario.

The Air Force invented a term for the fighter pilot maffia's more broadly idiotic funding priorities - High Demand Low Density (HDLD) assets. The classic example that you already mentioned is the AC-130, followed by the E-3 AWACS. UAV's have rapidly become the newest example. That the Air Force leadership has ignored these systems in order pursue yet more fighter aircraft of any type is disgraceful.

Hurray for the drastic idea of taking care of our troops. Never could understand being a hawk and not taking the steps to take care of our soldiers. If we take care of this area, perhaps the shortages in the services would end.

Good luck! Actually using the money for something useful in today's world would be a breath of fresh air: rather than wasting hundreds of billions on the defence industry's mega-profitable but utterly un-necessary "toys". Watch the vested interests and congressmen fall over themselves to stop any such thing happening!

We have a similar problem in Britain: Britain's defence ministry (sorry, Defence of BaE Ministry) waste much of the UK's £33 billion budget on toys that a) never actually work and b) are suitable only to re-fight World War II.

Likely threat scenarios will fall into two categories; a major war against a near peer i.e. China; a regional war/counter insurgency i.e. Iraq Afghanistan.

Carriers are useful in the regional context as a deterrent/intimidation tool but are increasingly vulnerable in a near peer scenario.
Regional actors will present little threat to a carrier and they are very useful for projecting airpower to fight the initial campaign and combat the early stages of an insurgency.

With increasingly sophisticated stealth stand off missile technology a carrier could well become a liability in conflict with a major power; possible to protect but at great cost.
Numerous Kilo class; or similar; submarines armed with advanced stealthy cruise missiles will present a significant challenge to a CVN at a much lower cost.
My view is that carriers will be necessary for some time but would usefully become more like the USMC carriers; optimised to support littoral operations against a regional power.

The F22 is indeed superior to the F35 in the same way that the F15 is/was superior to the F16. Still the F16 is the fighter of choice in many a conflict arguably more capable than many versions of the F15 and still in production.

A fighter needs to be where the action is and having more of a less but still superior fighter (compared with those of your counterpart) increases that capability.
The F22 is a nice deterrent and spearhead but not your much needed workhorse.

But all of the above is besides the point that Gates 2.0 is on the right track. Even the F35 doesn't provide ground troops with capabilities that cannot be provided by a "legacy" F16 or even a updated WWII Mustang with added technology to detect IED's or be around to provide firepower.

Besides the problem at hand there is the the threat of nuclear proliferation. I might prove to be useful to invest in missile defence to put rogue states out of the game by making having a "nuke" more of a burden than a bargaining chip.
When a schield is functional countries like Iran, Pakistan and North Korea find themselves with a missile that won't do as a threat. Other aspiring nations are faced with a long and costly enough program that leads to nothing and might choose to divert their efforts to, let's hope, peaceful purposes like feeding or educating their respective peoples.

Not having to deal with rogue states in ways like preemptive strikes more or less does away with one reason to maintain a credible strikeforce of F22's and comparable cutting edge projects.

So for the really long run it might be wise to reconsider canceling the YAL 1 airborne laser. Postponing until withdrawn from one of the two current theaters ?

It sounds to me as a wise move by mr Gates. What else is an army to do but to put every effort possible in to resolving the problem at hand ie Afganistan and Iraq.

To pour money into programs like the F22 is a waste and a travesty while troops on the ground need 60's technology like a low and slow flying propeller plane to give fire support at a tenth of the cost of a F22 (like an OV10d Bronco)

Most of the cost disparity between to two comes from spreading the fixed cost of setting up a production line over ~180 F-22s vs ~3500 total F-35s. The marginal cost for the VASTLY superior F-22 is minimal when you exclude that huge fixed cost disparity. The Navy and Marine lobbies are the only reason the F-35 has a future. For one, Gordon England (Rumsfeld's Dep Sec Def) swore that his legacy would be getting 5th generation fighters to the Navy.

The F-35 is a clear loser to the F-22 except for those that think aircraft carriers can effectively deliver decisive payloads. They can't, because of the weight tradeoffs for carrier takeoff/landing. Vertical takeoff and landing is even more amusing and more operationally ineffective for fighter/bombers. Those that believe aircraft carriers themselves can quickly project air power alone have also forgotten the Nimitz and Ford class carriers are too big to fit through the Suez and Panama canals.

To put "stealth" in perspective, the F-35 has the radar cross section of a basketball, which is about the size of the German U-boat snorkels we could detect with radar in the 1940's! F-35 proponents are ignoring the fact that it can't survive without the F-22 in front of it to gain air superiority.

The US should offer the F-22 to allies to like the British, Australians, and Japanese to spread the fixed costs more evenly for an aircraft already in production, while subsidizing additional USAF acquisitions. The Navy and Marines will never fly where the Air Force hasn't already achieved air supremacy with F-22's and can live with 4th generation fighters.

The biggest lesson of the F-22/F-35 squabble is that the USAF has the least effective lobby of the US Armed Forces. The USAF is out of touch with political reality. It established its "intellectual" centers in the mental bastions of Montgomery, AL and Colorado Springs, CO at the expense of Long Beach, CA and most importantly Washington, DC. Shame on you USAF! Learn from the Marines' lobbying instead of only envying it!

I hope that Mr Gates detailed his views on his recent visit to Australia. Australia believes in a submarine defence force, but the ALP will not countenance the vastly-superior nuclear sub option. We currently have six subs. Due to lack of maintenance facilities, only three can be operative at once. Due to shortage of personnel, we can't fully man three boats. But Prime Minster Rudd wants to have 12 new-generation subs built as a precaution against China's naval force build-up. Well, three, 12 or 50 convetional subs will make little difference in the China context.

In the meantime, only our small but first-rate Special Air Service troops are competent to engage in actual warfare, the regular force can do peace-keeping, humanitarian relief, training etc but not fight. It would be much better (and cheaper) to bring the army up to speed for, e.g., counter-insurgency use than to build submarines which will lack both crew and purpose.

While continuing with 10 carriers (1 less than our current 11) as per the Gates plan may be excessive, I think you miss the peculiar value of a carrier as it relates to force projection and international law.

Naval assets can park off a coast--and by virtue of geography, they have access to an astounding percentage of the world's countries. The carrier provides the broadest range of different tools as an asset; in effect letting the US drop an air base right next to any country it wants to rattle a saber at--and doing so legally, without worrying about acquiring permissions from the countries that would have to be overflown.

In addition, note that carriers are among the fastest naval warships (capable of outrunning the rest of their battlegroup).

Simply because naval assets haven't engaged in shooting matches recently doesn't mean they aren't relevant to force projection and Freedom of Navigation operations; e.g., whether China controls the South China Sea or Vietnam the Gulf of Tonkin (and whether they get rights under international law).

And I'd point out most military assets are vulnerable to nukes. Although a CSG has some defenses, I think we can all agree if folks start tossing the big boys back and forth, it'll be messy for everyone.

The US is fortunate to have a Defence Secretary who is able to link strategy with tactics. On the strategy front he understands the link between finance and economics and the ability to project military power on a long term basis. Gates understands that the days when the US could fight wars such as Iraq where no true US strategic interests were at stake are over. The retrenchment of US military power will continue over the next few decades. The free ride is over for NATO, Japan and South Korea.

It's good that DoD is cutting the F-22 (or at least plans to...we'll see what Congress wants). The F-22 is a good example of the bloated procurement process. It was originally designed for air-to-air interdiction, and is unmatched in that ability. But to ensure it was included in the fight (I think the last air-to-air combat occured in the 90s over Iraq), air-to-ground capabilities were added as well, driving the cost per plane to astronomical levels. The procurement process added additional capabilities to the plane to justify its existence. Ironically, its the costs of these added mission capabilities that have caused it to be scaled down.

I would say that Mr. Gates' work has just begun. The fact that he hasn't even mentioned the biggest, lowest hanging fruit of all suggests how deep the Pentagon's cultural dysfuction runs.

At a cost of many billions of dollars to build and operate, America's dozen odd nuclear aircraft carriers offer an impressive visual spectacle which sadly dwarfs their actual strategic and tactical utility. Carriers are built for open ocean conflict between two or more naval powers. The last time they actually played a leading role in such a drama was in the summer of 1942. In fact, there has only been one great carrier battle in history, and since that time no other power has ever even fielded a significant surface water threat for our carriers to crush. In short, the mission was accomplished long ago.

Secondary missions include offshore air support for land operations and general oceanic patrol, but we will never be able to efficiently employ more than a handful of carriers for those purposes, and once again, that isn't their core competency. Witness the minor role carriers played in the Gulf wars and their muteness in thwarting hungry Somalis in speedboats.

Most importantly, carriers are large slow assets vulnerable to tactical or even strategic nukes. In the opening days of any "serious" war, carriers will likely become great sarcophagi for thousands of our sailors, as if the lessons of the USS Arizona were never even heard.

If the defense establishment were more responsible, Mr. Gates wouldn't have to be so daring.